Letters Home from a Yankee Doughboy 1916-1919

Well I got rid of the Mess Sergeant’s job, and Im out again on the brick yard. The boys are sure getting sick of this stuff and are all longing for the rattlers to start for home.

I wonder how the table looks
at home
I wonder if they miss me while
I roam
I wonder how it feels, to sit
down to three square meals
While we are here just starving
all along
I can see the steaks and
chickens coming in.
I can see the fried potatoes
thick and thin.
I can hear my mother say
Boys what will you have today
I wonder how the table
looks at home.

This is one of many that are sung every night before taps. These cards are all dirty but I can’t help it. We don’t know any more about when we will go home now, that we ever did.

Sam

Dear Lena,

Im out here in the brick yards, (as I told Em,) dirty and sweaty, but feeling fine other wise. I wish you would try and make it right with all the folks I should be writing to, and say that I am pretty busy latly. We were out this morning drilling in the hills, and beleive me I was all in once, after climbing a hill with 210 rounds of amunition, rifle, round about, boyonet, wire cutters and a canteen of water. When I first came down here I didnt know it would be possible to climbe some of the hills we are climbing with the stuff we have to wear. I was in town yesterday and I weighed 150 lbs. being a gain of 10 pounds. I bet I pulled 5 lbs. off this morning.

Sam

Dear Pa.

It is just night fall and I am going to use up what little light there is left to say. My men and I are out here just across the Rio Grande River, opposite a town called Smeltertown. It gets its name from the largest smeltering plant in the country. When they dump the hot refuse out over the bank, it lights up every thing for almost a mile around. It looks like a river of fire as this stuff is cast off of the trains that they have for this work. Then up the road (or river) aways there is a large cement plant running all the time. We go to sleep by the noise of these machines.